Culture Fire at the Reina Sofía for fear that its director will perpetuate himself in office: "He has gone crazy"
Opinion The Reina Sofía needs to be renovated so as not to be a museum piece
Art El Círculo del Liceo, a select Barcelona club where the King is welcome
Some critics consider him the
"podemite" boss of the Reina Sofía Museum
who has adhered to his throne for fifteen years.
Others, like an efficient manager who has needed more than a decade to materialize
a project in tune with the streets, youth and the future of art.
But for almost all of them it is impossible to talk about Manuel Borja-Villel (Burriana, 1957) without mentioning excessively long time units
.
The logical thing when
one of the longest-lived museum directors in Spain is lied to.
However, on January 20, the secant line could be drawn that would put
an end to the Borja-Villel cycle at the head of the second most visited Spanish museum
.
As specified in the contract he signed in 2007, five years long and extendable, that day he must give way to his successor after accumulating two renewals in his position, the maximum allowed.
Although, as he announced exclusively for
El País
, nothing will prevent him from continuing to be a director. "
Retire? Not at all, you're welcome,"
he said in said interview.
Triquiñuela or legitimate act?
Just as he was chosen in a
public competition with an international jury where he faced 30 candidacies,
on February 1 the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía will hold
a similar call where he will be chosen as the incoming director.
Borja-Villel will attend as one more candidate on a list from which other names are unknown.
A decision that many consider a betrayal of the principles of the agreement that he signed 15 years ago.
Its not that easy.
In the rooms of the art gallery Manuel Borja-Villel has spent decades feeling full.
At 65 years old, he has built a life around cultural management that
penetrates from his job ambition to the most intimate of his personal life.
Married since 2009 to the Granada art historian Yolanda Romero,
head of the Conservatory Division of the Bank of Spain since 2015,
he is the father of a son from a previous marriage: a young man who is not dedicated to the world of museums, but who already has given him his first granddaughter.
His apartment, located near the Spanish Film Library, is more like his second home.
The conservative of the Bank of Spain and wife of Borja-Villel, Yolanda RomeroGTRES
"He spends a lot in the museum. He is a very hard-working, intelligent, educated and ambitious man.
Because he has not minded cutting heads when necessary," a source describes to LOC.
"In terms of museums, he has done very well. He is the promoter of major projects such as
the Radio 3 concert in front of Guernica or the online exhibition Rethinking Guernica,
which has made Picasso's painting accessible to everyone," says the same person, who prefers to remain anonymous.
Although Manuel Borja-Villel
is "Manolo" to his relatives and friends
, not everyone is Manolo's friend.
Only a few have earned his trust.
Within his close circle is his team from the Reina Sofía, in whom he has trusted since his arrival,
but also some close friends from outside the art gallery,
such as Vicente Todolí, a Valencian art curator (just like him) who came to run the Tate Modern in London.
He met his wife,
Yolanda, when she was director of the José Guerrero Center in Granada
.
She spent 15 years in office, from 2000 to 2015.
The son of a bricklayer from Burriana, a small town in Castellón, Borja-Villel
graduated in Art History from the University of Valencia in 1980.
Thanks to winning several scholarships, he was able to study in the United States, obtaining a master's degree at the University of Yale and his Ph.D. from the City University of New York.
The painter Antoni Tàpies posing in front of one of his paintingsGTRES
Back in Spain, Borja-Villel
took his first steps in the world of directing at the Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona,
where he was also artistic director for eight years.
In charge of the museum dedicated to Antoni Tàpies since it was founded in 1990, he became a "very close friend of the painter".
When
it comes to management, Borja-Villel is a man of lasting relationships.
Between 1998 and 2007 he was director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA).
During this time he began to bet
on more risky and unexpected exhibitions, by more unknown authors
.
Philosophy that he would later transfer to the Reina Sofía.
Nicknamed "el podemita", with as much sympathy as suspicion, he has shown himself close to valuing "
15-M and promoting more feminist, social or left-wing works of art".
However, he has always ensured that his objective is to reach all layers of the population and that the Reina Sofía is considered something more than
one of the basic vertices of the triangle of art in Madrid together with the Thyssen-Bornemiszal
.
The pinnacle has always been the Prado Museum, but he does not believe in those concepts that he perceives as moth-eaten.
"The Minister of Culture on duty always likes the Prado more than the Reina Sofía.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the artists are dead in the former," he once said.
Now, after sowing the bone of contention and raising the possibility of reoccupying the throne of Reina Sofía,
Borja-Villel has left an abstract picture that is difficult to interpret.
His nuances are the key.
Or maybe the signature.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more